Dallas Stars: Ability To Adapt Quickly Shown In Win Over Anaheim

There was a sense of urgency for both teams in Friday night’s game between the Dallas Stars and Anaheim Ducks. The Stars once again faced adversity in the early part of the game, but rallied to pull off an impressive win. That’s not easy to do.

There has been something obviously wrong with the Dallas Stars over the past few weeks. And for some reason, the issues and misfortunes continued piling up. That’s not something you want in the final weeks of a playoff push.

But the recent Stars that have taken the ice look to be nowhere near the caliber of the Stars we saw from mid-December to mid-February.

There were issues on offense, from Jamie Benn not contributing enough to a lack of scoring outside the top line. There were also issues on the power play. Dallas had quickly sunk to a bottom ten power play unit in the NHL and could not cash in on easy man-advantage opportunities, even with some of the league’s best setup men and scorers in their lineup.

And then there were the injuries. Radek Faksa and Esa Lindell missed two games earlier this week. In the crease, Ben Bishop hurt his knee and will be out for at least a week. It was also announced yesterday that Martin Hanzal is shut down for the rest of the season for a spinal fusion surgery.

Dallas Stars /

Dallas Stars

The Dallas Stars seemed to be falling apart in many different ways, which altogether led to decreasing hopes for the postseason.

But for some reason, you can just never count these Dallas Stars out anymore.

On Friday night, the Stars welcomed the Anaheim Ducks to town for their final home game before embarking on a six-game trip. It was the second meeting between the two teams, with Dallas trying to quickly negate the first one (where Ryan Miller shut them out with 41 saves in a 2-0 loss).

It wasn’t looking to be an easy win by any means for a struggling Stars team. While Dallas had points in four of their past five games, they had struggled with putting together a string of dominant or even consistent performances. On top of that, Dallas was squaring off with a determined and hungry Anaheim team that is in the same playoff fight as them.

Through the first period, things looked to be much of the same. The Stars had some chances and energy, but looked doomed by an early goal against and went into intermission with a 1-0 deficit.

In the second period, they started to show signs of life and even found a few close calls by hitting the posts, but there was no luck in finding a goal.

But then the third period started, and it happened. The Dallas Stars scored on power play deflection goals from Devin Shore and Jamie Benn and gained a 2-1 lead with a few minutes left in the game. With Kari Lehtonen holding down the fort and putting on a perfect show after the first goal against, Dallas was able to sneak away with the win.

It was a big two points on the line for both teams and the Stars proved that they wanted it more. That was a surprising development for a team that just couldn’t seem to want it more over the past few games.

But it’s not the only thing that was surprising. The way in which Dallas won was pretty incredible too.

First off, the Stars rallied from an early deficit. That is an area that they have not shown significant strength in over the past month. Dallas has given up the first goal in 10 of their past 17 games and own a record of 5-4-1 in those games. They picked up the fifth win against the Ducks to get themselves just above .500.

It hasn’t necessarily been one thing or another (at least effort-wise) that has led to their inability to get on the board first, but it was clearly hurting them.

Secondly, Dallas put up two power play goals. After going 0/4 on the power play in their first meeting with the Ducks (who own a top-10 PK unit in the NHL) on Feb. 21, the Stars stormed back. They not only turned a corner with their own struggling power play by turning in a 2/2 night, but they did it against one of the best penalty kills in the business.